Month: October 2024

For the fourth decade running, no costume for me. I am not cool.

Went to the office, which was full of people, did some more customer meetings, ate a bowl of veggies and pork, spent a lot of time talking with coworkers which I rarely do. There were a few costumes, but not many.

I had one (1) trick-or-treater this year, which is a huge percentage increase over last year.

Read: Peach Boy Riverside vol 4-5 (coolkyousinnjya): Ogre intrigue! Sus ogres professing good intentions! Frau’s backstory!

Written: 206.

Those would definitely have helped at the con!

Went to the office which only had coworker D, ate Bonchon chicken things (which are not significantly different from chicken tenders except in the sauce, but somehow okay anyway), did some customer call.

Read: Whoever Steals This Book vol 3 (Nowaki Fukamidori, Kakeru Sora): For a manga all about writing, this isn’t very well-written. All the exposition came in a lump at the end (which this was). Maybe I’m too picky.

Read: Peach Boy Riverside vol 3 (coolkyousinnjya): Ogres don’t get along with each other any better than they get along with humans, apparently. Or than humans get along with beastfolk, etc. Sally has gone from “I bet we can come to a peaceable solution if we talk about this like fellow sophonts of goodwill” to “here is the peaceable solution, do it or I murder you all” and I can’t blame her.

Read: Jasmine is Haunted (Mark Oshiro): What it says on the tin! A Latina middle-school girl is haunted, it’s very upsetting, finally she makes friends who can help her figure it out and grownups stop being in denial. Also, plentiful gayness.

Written: 170.

Other people can have cats too, sure.

Back to work. I don’t like getting up for surveillance capitalism nearly as much as I like getting up to play RPGs.

I did get to play an RPG today, though. I decided not to change my character to be less like me because it would be horrible cultural appropriation and also Sage was sleeping on my arms for all the time I could have used to rewrite the sheet, so it was my horrible isolated tech geek who went to Renfaire, did not get anywhere with the cute girl, and then got lured into the Faeriemobile by an offer of a better job. Surely this will be fine. (It will not be fine, that’s the entire point of Changeling.)

Written: 157.

It is the anniversary of the day Sage and Nightvale came to live with me. Many of my life decisions are questionable, but this one was good.

I have to go to work tomorrow, so today I had to do a bunch of shoppings after Sage let me get up. Annoying, but now I have the things.

What did I learn from running games this time? Definitely that railroading is my friend, and I don’t even need very many stations on that line. This time, after character creation, we had the announcement of the quest, pootling around in Lizard Bay looking for information, and then about two places on the Cursed Isle. Character creation should probably have been slightly shorter, but that wouldn’t have recovered enough time for a whole other scene. There were also only about five NPCs/encounters, counting all the old people in town and the mermaid and her pirates as one each.

A less welcome lesson is regardless whether I was ever smart enough to remember all the things, I’m not now. I definitely needed a checklist of things to take to the con, because I forgot several of them, even ones that are basic to any running-a-con-game expedition. I also needed better notes of both game setup (I completely spaced on mentioning the X-card in the second session) and specific important information for the PCs to appreciate the shape of their doom. Just winging it from vibes is not the way to get everything covered!

Even with my decrepit brain, it did go well enough that I must do it again next year. I might even remember these lessons.

Written: 262.

More importantly, it’s National Black Cat Day in the UK, but neither I nor Nightvale is there.

Between fan noise and two nights of games ending early, I was much more alive this morning than at this point last year, which is good because I had to pack up and then run a game in the first slot of the day.

Ran: Perils and Princesses. In a turn of events that was only surprising because I did not know he came to BBC, one of my players was the designer of Princess World, but fortunately I am not prone to fangirling. He played Clik-Clok the daughter of the Tin Woodsman, so that was cute. This time I got things moving along well enough, but somehow the antagonists were not creepy enough, and the princesses almost let them get away with it, but someone remembered they had a dodgy mushroom in their inventory and used it to contact their fairy godmother who only appears in dreams and visions and ask for better instructions. The day was saved! They used the same solution as the second test group, so that was reassuring in some way.

Played: A magical girl search of terrible things to fight in Wandering Crows. Along with a half-merperson deathly afraid of water and a necromancer who could only bear to raise animals, she wandered a world recovering from fifty years of war and deprivation. We were hired to escort a box of paprika to a partially-underwater city than had been deprived for two generations, which involved keeping loud-mouthed cops from starting a paprika riot and fighting through gangsters (our merperson Squid literally barfed a lizard gangster to death), but turned out to be only half the job. The priest of the temple we were delivering to needed the paprika for a specific ritual in a specific, dangerous place to save the city, and we had the choice of going through paprika thieves or necromancers to get there. We chose necromancers, which our necromancer defeated by laying their zombies to rest instead of having a massive undead battle. As a reward for maintaining the life-support system of the city, we got information about our personal quests, a huge favor from the important temple, etc, but most importantly, the ancient dinosaur priest threw off his robe and flexed for us. (No, really, rainbow feathers!) Wandering Crows is a card-based that’s intended to be simple and portable, but it’s also a little abstract for me. I would prefer what you write on your character sheet to be more than flavor text. I should send a comment to the designer.

And that was it for Big Bad Con 2024! I did not play all lesbians all the time this year, but close enough, and I only played games I’d never played before. The games I ran went much better than last time I ran two years ago, because I was ruthless about railroading. Will I run Perils and Princesses again next year? Maybe! But maybe something I like more will come along.

I managed to resist buying any dice in the dealer’s room, despite the many beautiful colors on offer, because I do not need more dice. I did buy a bunch of games in hardcopy (Ryuutama, which I might already own but couldn’t find at home; Follow, ditto; For the Queen; CBR+PNK; The Lost and the Jammed; Sapphic Space Pirates, Rebels of the Outlaw Waste because the PDF doesn’t have the stickers for character advancement; Cloud Empress and some adventures) and a small plush squid with eldritch sigils (their name is Devil Squid and they are Baby Lizard’s friend).

Criminal Cat Onion’s human was allegedly at the con, but I did not manage to meet her.

I just made the train home, and my cats were there and I fell over dead.

Written: VACATION

Played: A pseudo-Islamic knight with a giant chicken (actually a Southeast Asian jungle fowl) in Gubat Banwa. A rich king hired us to pillage and/or kill the idealist king who was stealing his excessive wealth to fund an artistic community, but when we found out from a captured minion that they used to be close until the falling out, we had to drag him back and force them to repair their relationship. Gubat Banwa is very board-game-grid in the manner of D&D4e, but the part between battles seems cooler, and also you don’t want to kill random spuds because it’s better to have them beholden to you. Hurray non-European fantasy!

Ran: Perils and Princesses. Somehow, despite forgetting character sheets, of all things. Fortunately, there was a printer in the hotel and I still had the files on a thumb drive. Once we got past that, it went okay. I failed to deliver all the important information in a timely manner, and the princesses were so entertaining that I forgot to move the plot along and we had to resolve it in a rush right before our time was up, but it did get resolved, and people appeared to have fun, so I’m willing to count it as a partial success. The laminated handouts were handy for character creation, although I think there may have been too many of them. If I did this again, I’d probably move some things from random generation to pregen or player choice, although I don’t know what.

Played: A horrible little wrecking ball of a goblin in Wicked Ones in Gaming on Demand. I did okay at biting legs off and overcharging generators, and the fire demon and kobold ninja were also good, but the mad scientist slime demon totally stole the show and also won by getting lasers for our dungeon to fend off the forces of light when they came to complain about the human blood we used to wash off our curses.

I had a burger that was more satisfying than any recent burger, although it was real cow meat, so I probably shouldn’t have.

Written: VACATION

Funny how getting up early to do things I like is more appealing than getting up early to make rich fuckwads richer.

Played: A blue devil sorceress composed of 47% noodles by volume in Broken Worlds. The other 53% was unsupported assertions, but her plan to deal with the giant rolling sphere of hate and gold coming to destroy her neighborhood was in fact perfect, or at least very successful. Also implicated: a mendicant monk, a gang boss, an insufficiently-renegade angel, and an acupuncturist abandoned by her divine mother.

Played: A merchant hurrying out of town after an embarrassing mishap in Ryuutama. There could have been fighting, but instead we were very reasonable and helped the homesick witch with her cafe on the sky island of dragons. It was very Kiki’s Delivery Service. The GM provided tea and cookies, which I had not expected at an all-masking con but was very nice.

Played: Follow is more of a story game than a role-playing game, but I was responsible for the grizzled cybered-up old space dog and the AU space pirate captain. We didn’t make a very good SF story, but we did somehow make it onto the treasure asteroid and not get eaten or enslaved by the slime princess who formed from the slime tribbles, despite the loss of the captain and other characters. There were only three people out of four slots, so we ended early and that was okay. Sleep is good.

I tried eating chicken tenders and fries, because that sounded warm and filling and also celebrated Greasy Food Day, but no, I really don’t like regular chicken tenders any more.

Written: VACATION

I did eat some food. I also worried a lot and packed some. I didn’t make a list, I’ve done this often enough that I can remember everything I need before getting on the train.

Got to the hotel and realized I had forgotten all the office supplies like index cards and blank paper and pens, but that’s not a big deal, I can scrounge substitutes.

Spontaneously interacted with some nice enbies from Boston, ate something called a quesabirria, applauded the opening ceremonies, admired how much of Big Bad Con is dedicated to giving opportunities to people not like me, half-listened to a game show thing run by people from the Internet while reading up on games I am soon going to play, went to bed.

After however many years of failing to sleep in unnaturally quiet hotel rooms and being disappointed in white noise apps, I finally realized that all I had to do was type “fan noise” into YouTube.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 8-9 (Ryoko Kui): Bizarre transformations! Elf shenanigans! Chilchuk backstory! Giant mushrooms! Laios using his brain! Marcille backstory (and disturbing psychological insight)! Buddy dungoneers! Succubus attack! Mystic visions! Elf backstory! Dungeon backstory!

Read: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End vol 10: Horrifying demon backstory to explain why this conflict is happening.

Written: VACATION.

Perfect that square! Square that perfection!

Got all the laminated things from Marith, surely I am now completely ready to run a game.

In the evening, we went to hear Lus in her school production (which was actually a community theater production with high school drama class as chorus) of Les Miserables. I understand we can’t demand too much of community theater, but I would like whoever was running sound that night to be sent to the labor camp in Jean Valjean’s place, because that was WAY TOO LOUD and also somehow screechy even when the manly men were singing their solos. (Jus was fine, of course.) My poor head.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 7 (Ryoko Kui): Ninja bonding! Elf trouble! Senshi’s traumatic backstory!

Written: VACATION.

Use your knees to avoid goose-stepping!

I am on vacation so it’s okay that I’m mostly useless. I did get my flu and COVID shots, though, and pretend to do some prep for the con.

We finally managed to have some Tuesday gaming. Now we’re making characters for Ken’s 90s East Bay Nostalgia Changeling game. I think I have failed. My character, despite having a good name (Tiffany “Theophania” Whitney) is not enough unlike me, so will be terrible. On the other hand, it’s Changeling, so maybe the characters are supposed to be terrible.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 6 (Ryoko Kui): More old friends! More intrigue! More ninjas! More trouble! New quest!

Written: 326.

Yesterday I saw a v smol lizard on my way home from errand #2.

Did a work, was on a customer call, got snuggled on by a very cute void, and now am on vacation for one (1) week.

Read: Lonely Castle in the Mirror vol 4 (Mizuki Tsujimura, Tomo Taketomi): It’s not like that wasn’t telegraphed from very early on, and yet it still feels like a severe genre twist! One volume to go, apparently.

Read: Mysterious Disappearances vol 3 (Nujima): Another victory, and we find out a little bit more about Ren and his horrifying train station friend. Also, Sumireko didn’t reach an R rating until the bonus pages.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 5 (Ryoko Kui): Ominous twist! Ninjas! Intrigue! Multiclassing!

Written: 286.

But also National Sloth Day, so do I write or just hang upside-down from a tree?

Ran two whole errands, but now I am good on groceries for the whole household (except the large spider who lives behind the microwave). I may need to go shopping later in the week to get food to take to the con with me, but that’s a problem for Future Me.

I also got some Thai food; does it count as an errand if I brought Marith pad thai? That would be three errands, which is almost like not wasting the entire day!

Caught up on the last week of journal, which was not hard because I did at least take notes every day even if I didn’t turn them into sentences.

Written: 249.

How depressing. Also Dress Like A Dork Day, which is also ouch.

I had an unsatisfactory cheeseburger the other day that was cold from being DoorDashed, so I got a fresh one from the same place while I was shopping, but it was also not that satisfactory (thought much warmer). I dunno, man, it seems like cheeseburgers should always be good. Maybe I’m experiencing them wrong.

Also unsatisfactory, although in a different way: continued my habit of buying more manga than I read in a week, leading to shelf shortages at home.

When we went over to watch anime, Jus and her friend A(?) were all dressed up because they were going to Homecoming together, like real high-schoolers who are old enough to wear cleavage dresses. What is up with that?

Watched: Bungo Stray Dogs 22-24: End of the Guild arc! Tiger and Rashoumon are now frenemies instead of just plain enemies. There’s one more episode in the season, and then apparently next season there’s even bigger doom.

Written: 223.

Boo neckties!

Somehow, sleep did not make me less sleepy. Also a customer was very distraught about their thing so I had to do the thing and I know my boss’s boss is paying attention.

Read: 7th Time Loop vol 2 (Touko Amekawa, Hinoki Kino, Wan*Hachipisu): After six lives of work and accomplishment, spending her seventh life lying about is not happening. There seems to be plenty of doom waiting for her, though.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 4 (Ryoko Kui): That’s the initial quest… resolved. I wonder if this is where the prophesied plot twist comes in.

Written: 281.

That’s literally every day since at least 2016!

Went to the office, which had many people again, ate a doshirak (which seems to be Korean for bento) full of tofu and pot stickers, did a work even though I was sleepy. The train was late getting me home, but whatever.

Read: 7th Time Loop vol 1 (Touko Amekawa, Hinoki Kino, Wan*Hachipisu): Our protagonist has been through six iterations of a time loop from when she gets jilted by the crown prince, each one short but full of learning and independence in a different profession. Now the foreign prince whose bullshit war got her murdered six times even though they’ve never met, wants to carry her off to his country and marry her. Surely this will go splendidly.

Read: Whoever Steals This Book vol 2 (Nowaki Fukamidori, Kakeru Sora): Two book worlds this time, and we meet a thief, but are they the thief that’s causing all this trouble? Still not much closer to learning who dog-girl is or whether they’re going to kiss or why these books are magic or what’s up with the aunt or really anything.

Read: Azarinth Healer vol 4 (Rhaegar): Completely OP isekai litRPG protagonist returns to civilization for a bit, and completely pwns the n00bs, but then has to go back north to help with an extremely high-level dungeon, where she pwns creatures of much higher level and learns some stuff and makes some friends. Not level 400 yet, though.

Written: 202.

Or National Feral Cat Day, and Sage and Nightvale are rescues, so they count! But they are sweeties now.

Went to the office which was excessively full of people, ate some tacos, did a customer call and some other work.

Marith has made some samples of laminated handouts for the con games, which look like they will do nicely. If I were actually competent, I would do graphics stuff to fit them on fewer pages and stuff, but I’m not.

Read: Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End vol 9 (Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe): Characters from the mage test are already recurring, as are enemies from Frieren’s past. And doom.

Read: Delicious in Dungeon vol 3 (Ryoko Kui): Deeper into the dungeon means more monsters to eat and more fellow adventurers to regard with caution and drama.

Written: 213. I didn’t finish any books like Kit and other pocket fronds, but I did make my MC suffer.

Appropriate to what I’m writing. Also National Grouch Day, appropriate to my life.

My boss and his boss are both in town this week, so there’s a team dinner like the one I got Covid at. I skipped using my regular Tuesday night thing as an excuse, even though it was cancelled this week, because I didn’t like being sick.

Read: A Small Town in Southern Illvaria (Acaswell): Isekai litRPG about a STEM-oriented high-schooler who becomes determined to get to the bottom of this “system” and “magic” nonsense in her new world. Not very well-written, but I kind of want to know what she’s going to find out (with the understanding that the author might be completely out to lunch).

Written: 205.

Because Columbus is deservedly in the Bad Place.

Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 31 (Tomohito Oda): Some romance with a date that went poorly, not as much goofy stuff, Komi wants to study Making Friends at college.

Watched: The Dragon Prince 2.9-3.1: Rewatch, because we didn’t remember what was going on. Not sure if we’ll keep going from here to skip ahead until we get to new stuff.

Written: 303.

To commemorate how, since there is no gaming but there are cats, I stayed in bed forever and missed the final signups opening. Both of the games I wanted to sign up for were full by the time I got my act together, but I signed up for Follow in one slot, and can do Games on Demand in the other. There is no shortage of gaming. Maybe next year I’ll try to run in Games on Demand, which requires less prep, but for two potential games.

Today, however, I am clearly a loser who can accomplish nothing.

Read: Gokurakugai vol 2 (Yuto Sano): More monsters, more anti-monster conspiracy. Meh.

Written: 199.

Also International African Penguin Awareness Day, International Day Against DRM, and National Curves Day.

Got up at a reasonable hour, went shopping, came home and spent the entire day catching up here because I was like two weeks behind. Being dumb makes everything hard.

Read: Magical Boy vol 1 (The Kao): The latest daughter of the ancient divine magical girl lineage is actually a trans boy, who is already trying to deal with transitioning and an unsupportive mother when he learns about his powers and the forces of darkness that need defeating and everything. Both the art and the storyline seem a little simple, but things like binders are mentioned, so not sure if this is MG or YA. YA covers a wide range, though.

Written: 279 again.

Also World Egg Day, and I actually did eat some egg today, since I had the other purple rice pork thing from yesterday for lunch. I have not taken Sage and Nightvale to the vet yet.

Read: A War in the Depths (Erios909): Sequel to Demon’s Ascent, the OP isekai protagonist is trying to settle into the moderately-dystopic underground city with her crush but the city is too busy disintegrating from factional conflict, religious assholery, homophobia, etc. Doom, violence, excessive magic, unexpected results of eating people, technology transfer, but also smooches.

Written: 279.

I told the pocket friends, so there could be a lizard gif party.

Went to the office, which was full of people including coworker A who is visiting from the UK, ate purple rice wrapped around pork and egg and veggies, went home early so I could do the evening work while Boss K is on vacation.

Read: Pandora Unchained vol 1 (Patrick Laplante): Extremely Westernized cultivation fantasy: mana instead of qi, D&D classes, dungeons are lost temples to the dead Greek gods, etc. Main character is a physician dying from having his cultivation destroyed in an intra-clan spat when he prays to what they have instead of gods now and gets an OP poison-based cultivation path. Intrigue and resource-gathering and assholes and a dungeon labyrinth ensue.

Read: Me and My Beast Boss vol 2 (Shiroinu): Giant terrifying lion boss, human subordinate, corporate intrigue, feelings.

Read: Gokurakugai vol 1 (Yuto Sano): She’s a stoic chain-smoking gunslinger, he’s a young punk with superpowers, they fight anthropophagous undead in a seedy vaguely-Chinese city. The monsters are called “maga”, which pleases me.

Read: Livesuit (James SA Corey): The alien war from The Mercy of Gods seen from the perspective of the main(?) human civilization. Their method of interstellar travel is very unclear except for the time dilation, and in fact a lot of their technology is unclear, but it doesn’t seem like they’re doing a very sensible job of fighting the aliens, or of making supersoldiers. In fact, it seems kind of like their military strategy is to maximize bleakness and futility. Is there an in-world reason for what they’re doing? Shrug emoji.

Written: 183.

Most curious event: three people signed up for each of my sessions at Big Bad Con, so I guess we’re doing this.

Went to the office, ate a cold burger and cold fries because I never learn, did a work, made my escape early so that I could be at my real computer at 18:00 for the second wave of signups. Successfully signed up for Gubat Banwa (non-European fantasy!) and In the City of Glass (never heard of it before), so all was well.

Read: Tiger, Tiger vol 1 (Petra Erika Nordlund): Marith tried to get me to read this as a webcomic, but my ever-decreasing ability to read webcomics foiled her. I was able to read it on paper, though, and it’s pretty swell. A noble lady steals her brother’s identity and ship to set off looking for the theological implications of sea sponges. Hilarity, creation myths, monstrous stowaways, and gay longings ensue, and they’re barely past the first port.

Written: 287. Kit wrote EIGHT THOUSAND.

Hi, Jus!

Also World Octopus Day. No idea what’s up with lesbian octopodes, but that’s probably my next Eclipse Phase character.

No gaming, Kelsey was having a birthday party.

Read: Hell of a Witch (Rachel Aaron): Sequel to Hell for Hire, the characters are making some serious moves against Gilgamesh the King of Heaven and his goons. The ML and FL are also making moves on each other, although in an extremely wholesome way. Next book, everything will implode horribly, I’m sure.

Read: Get It At Sutler’s (Daniel Sell): A supplement for Troika characters, about working at a large and somewhat surreal department store for extra cash. Lots of random tables for what can happen while the PCs are working at the fish counter or whatever else they may be required to do, and what kinds of Troika weirdness may wander in to disrupt their shift. Saints, parasites, uppity nobles, union events, veterans of the war against the fish, the Night Manager, etc. You are definitely going to earn that munificent 90p/shift.

Written: 272 of rewriting my Big Bad Con adventure.

I made some PDFs for handouts for Big Bad Con, on the assumption that my games will happen even though I only have one signup for each session so far. (One is the creator of Princess World, which is kind of alarming but still only counts as one signup.) Marith says she can laminate them, which probably looks nice than just making a bunch of raw printouts.

Read: Lonely Castle in the Mirror vol 3 (Mizuki Tsujimura, Tomo Taketomi): They do the obvious thing after the big revelation at the end of last volume, but it somehow doesn’t work, which is quite a plot twist. They’re getting close to the deadline, too, so I don’t think there can be more than a couple more volumes to explain what’s going on. Unless it’s never explained, of course, which is always a possibility.

Written: 170.

Also National Badger Day. Not sure whether that includes honey badgers, but they don’t care.

Marith wanted to bowl, so I rushed to the gooshyfood store and back to make sure I would not repurposed as cat food later in the week, and made it back in plenty of time to win at bowling (I was the only one to break 100) and steal Nonny’s fries. Then we went back to Monkeycat Towers to eat Thai food (mostly pad thai, since after all it is National Noodle Day) and watch Everything Everywhere All At Once, which is pretty much Marith’s favorite movie ever and one she hopes everybody will appreciate as much as her. I’m not sure that’s humanly possible, but it was well-received and gave Jus many feels. After the movie, we played the old party game of Sardines, but it was too spooky with the lights out and too easy with the lights on so eventually we stopped. I never found anybody, because Sardines is not as easy as bowling.

Written: 202.

Cephalopod is aware of you!

Also World Teacher’s Day and World Storytelling Day.

Today was first signups for Big Bad Con events. The first two signups for everybody allegedly went live at noon, so I slept in instead of trying to rush to do shopping and get home. I was ready at noon, but as seems to happen every year, the database would not work for several hours, and I didn’t get to go shopping until late afternoon. I did eventually get signed up for a session of Ryuutama and a session of the Kill 6 Billion Demons RPG, and then made it to the store and back in time to go to anime. Barely. It was not my preferred way to spend an afternoon, even if I did get a bunch of crafting done in Shop Titans.

Watched: Bungo Stray Dogs 18-21: More three-sided conflict among Port Mafia, Obnoxious Americans, and the heroes.

Read: ShipCore 3.0 (Erios909): The protagonist and her best friend make it to civilization, not entirely in one piece, and it becomes a lot more apparent why people don’t like AIs to run around doing their own thing. Even the AIs that are part of the power structure are kind of awful, although possibly redeemable with the power of smooches.

Written: 217.

I have some of those!

Read: Monster Psalms (Matt Guss): 31 standard D&D monster types (goblin, dragon, skeleton, naga, sphinx, …) each with half a dozen tables for unique origins, appearances, motivations, powers, mutations, etc. No stat blocks, but when mechanics come up, it’s clearly generic OSR. Unedited prerelease version, but already has some good bits.

Written: 172.

If only!

I went into the office, but I was the only one in our closet, so I was able to eat my orange chicken and pot-stickers and do a bit of work in peace.

Read: Chasing Spica vol 1 (Chihiro Orihi): More high-school yuri, academic rivals-to-enemies-to-having-unexpectedly-hot-dreams. Slightly sexier than many examples of the genre, and neither of the leads seems to be an idiot or a monster or a lunatic.

Read: I Wanna Do Bad Things With You vol 1 (Yutaka): He’s a high-school villain (at the level of secretly draining the pool because he hates swim class), she’s a meek mousy girl with well-hidden strength and curves and a secret taste for evil, together they do crimes. Obviously there’s no point to male protagonists, but he’s kind of Miles-like in his shortness and health problems and cunning, so I guess that’s okay, and she’s super-hot when she stands up straight and ties her hair back, which always amuses me.

Read: ShipCore 2.0 (Erios909): The wider universe comes to impinge on our heroines’ little corner, showing how much of a backwater it really is and how being impressive to the hicks there is not that impressive. Also, von Neumann capabilities are a go, which cannot possibly lead to any problems.

Written: 160.